Nokia Ace to kick off 4G Windows Phone 7 action?

It's full steam ahead for the Windows Phone 7 revolution it seems, with 4G fun coming next year, kicking off with the Nokia Ace.

The Ace is one of three LTE-compatible handsets that Windows blogger Paul Thurrott has named on his site that he says will be hitting AT&T in early 2012. Apparently he was "sitting on" the juicy details "out of respect for the Windows Phone guys" but has decided to come clean as the rumour mill has got WP7-LTE leaky as of late.

The Nokia Ace will arrive on 18 March, followed by the HTC Radiant and the Samsung Mendel. Microsoft's LTE ambitions are all set to be revealed over in Vegas at CES.

It was back in October that we first got wind of the Nokia Ace. It's said to have a 4.3-inch AMOLED screen, an 8-megapixel AutoFocus camera with a Carl Zeiss lens, a 1.4GHz single core processor, 16GB of storage and an 1800mAh battery.

Not a lot is known of the Radiant and the Mendel, although there have been rumours of another HTC 4.7-inch device landing on WP7.

It is likely the LTE action will require a software update. Could the "Competitive Superphones" bullet point on the Apollo section of the supposed Windows Phone roadmap be anything to do with it we wonder? Roll on CES we say, we can't wait to find out.